


When The Rain Stops

by sweaterweathr



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: AU, Gratuitous use of italics, M/M, Tangled AU, warnings and stuf will be added as it goes on bc im not sure how this will turn out yet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 08:35:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11551488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweaterweathr/pseuds/sweaterweathr
Summary: Harry is a boy who lives in a tower and wants to touch the stars. Louis Tomlinson is the dirty criminal who shows him how.or a Tangled au.





	When The Rain Stops

**Author's Note:**

> alright so my only excuse is i really wanted to watch tangled and somehow this happened and i have absolutely noo idea what im doing with this  
> lets see if i ever get motivation to finish !  
> [tumblr](http://daggersau.tumblr.com)

It began with sharp wind cutting into his cheeks like frenzied razors clawing their way to his core and leaving him bleeding and empty, with his fingers grasping to stone as cold as isolation for purchase while hauling his body through a solitary, conveniently human-sized opening in an otherwise endless wall, and sixty feet between him and the ground. No, Louis finds himself recalling begrudgingly as he hoists his leg onto the ledge, wind whistling vengefully in his ears. It began when Louis weighted the value of gilded crown belonging to a ghost as more than that of his life. Somewhere in the aftermath he finds himself with both his worthless life and what was quickly becoming a glorified sparkly headband dangling out of the window of desolate tower in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.  With a heave of finality his body tips in his favour crumbling onto the stony ledge and gravity loses her tentative, teasing grasp on Louis’ ankles.

Louis pauses on the lip of the tower window and it feels fitting that only here on what could be the edge of the world, teetering on the boundary of life and death, that he can take a minute to breathe. His whole life has been _one foot in front of the other, keep running Louis, get away._ Opportunities to sit, to think, aren’t something Louis has had chance to make himself familiar with. So that’s what he does. He thinks. With a bleak landscape of isolation painted with the withering nature that frames this alcove of the world glistening icily in the wake of the February sunrise, Louis sits and he thinks. He thinks about how the crown between his fingertips felt like momentary power and the cold metal that once harboured warmth tasted like a liberation that encompassed him; a freedom that Louis in his 19 years he had never known and how it left him exhilarated. He hates it. He hates that even now with the crown nestled safely in a nondescript, dirtied satchel he needs to steal a memoir of a lost prince to feel some semblance of control. _This is all you are and all you will ever be,_ the bitter anger in Louis growls, _a dirty fucking criminal._ Memories of desperate feet slapping against the palace floor and two pairs of straining lungs joining his in a syncopated rhythm of panting and ecstasy at pulling their barbaric stunt off as the fled with the wealth of kings in their grasps flood his view and briefly Louis is blinded by the guilt of leading his accomplices where they couldn’t follow and abandoning the two men. He is inclined to agree with the bitterness residing in his subconscious; he is a dirty fucking criminal who’s fluent in betrayal and isolation.  
  
Malice clouds his vision and - oh - sweet resentment has long since woven her way into Louis’ core; he is intimately familiar with her acid on his tongue and dark animosity in his ears. _I deserve a fucking castle_ , he thinks as he turns himself away from the rising sun. Only a few moments have passed, given by the unchanging lethargy the world is sitting in but it feels like an eternity.  
  
_I deserve a fucking castle because I am Louis Tomlinson._ He presses his hands viciously into his burning eyes as his feet find the floor and his thoughts run eighty miles an hour. _I am Louis Tomlinson and that has to stand for something._  
  
He stands. He drops his hands to grasp his satchel, confirmation he still has his chance. He looks up and suddenly all he knows are green eyes that hold the stars, a  frying pan in his face and a world that tips upside down.

***

Louis regains consciousness to blanketed shadows, a golden glow over his eyes casting dancing purples and oranges behind his eyelids in his haziness, and wrists and ankles bound to a splintered chair encircled by - fuck, is that _hair?_ Bile rises to his throat, the putrid acid burning and panic clutches an unrelenting fist into his ribcage. He can't, he _can't_ be imprisoned he can't be caught like this again, he needs to get _out out out right now. Fuck,_ he can’t breathe, he nee-

_‘Struggling is pointless.’_

In his panicked frenzy, adrenaline pounding in his ears, his throat, his eyes, his fingertips, Louis almost misses the low whisper that could’ve easily been a tremor in the floorboards. It is only as the beams of the ceiling hiss and groan under what must be a foreign weight, that he throws a haphazard, assessing glance around the room. In the midst of still trying to choke down fear, he realises his separation from a trauma he thought he had forgotten. Instead of the dingy cell he foolishly expected, he finds himself swallowed by the sun, stars, and everything in between. Paintings of the cosmos cover the walls and glimmer in the low light, a diary of colours and childhood and confessions. The novels scattered on the floor tell a similar story and suddenly Louis feels like a trespasser in a tragic playground of imagination and solitude.

Louis isn’t left any time to contemplate the kind of person who may live here, what their story is and why they choose to live in isolation, when the beams creak again and the mumble he almost dismissed as a manifestation of his paranoia returns in an _‘I’m not afraid of you.’_ It’s a deep husk that quivers ever so imperceptibly like an arrow pulled taut, a nearing summer storm at breaking point, and Louis can tell this man - betrayed by the innocence that drips from his vowels and anxiety interlaced with his full bodied accent - is afraid.  There is a shift in the light and the shadows cast by a hidden silhouette transform into a slender figure and in the moment Louis looks up his gaze is filled with russet curls the colour of autumn and empty coffee cups and _green green green_.

The storm breaks, heavens opening, and Louis is drowning.

Of course, because the universe is laughing at him today, it is as Louis is comparing the rawness of those eyes to a forest fire and poetry in motion, that this beautiful boy - because it is a boy, face still possessing the softness of a soul untainted by reality - with harrowed eyes lands in front of him, grips his chest with one desperate fist and his jaw in the other with a vigour seemingly out of place in hands so delicate. Louis’ delusions of tenderness shatter into fragments at his bound feet as the stranger’s clasp on his face tightens and a growl tumbles from plush lips.

‘What do you _want_ from me,’  
  
The words _your hand in marriage_ catch in his throat and burn as he chokes out a ‘hi,’ instead. Louis, for one is rather proud of himself for not stuttering over the syllable, still trying to wrap his mind around the hand against his throat and the picture of sincerity attached to it. ~~Get a fucking grip, Tomlinson.~~  
  
Curly, as Louis has taken to calling him in his mind, liking how it rolls almost lyrically off his metaphorical tongue, does not seem to share the same pride if the squeak of indignation, the blistering pain against his head, and mumble of ‘oops’ is anything to go by.  
  
Louis, cursing himself for not noticing that fucking frying pan, is rather tired of having the shit beaten out of him and his instinct to lash out is only quelled by the diminishing starlight in Curly’s eyes and the realisation of the boy’s terror swallows him with sympathy and the crushing need to reignite his vibrancy coursing through his veins. After all, Louis knows first hand how fear can tease demons out of children, but, when stipped to its core, fear is nothing but overwhelming helplessness and while Louis doesn’t have enough to live for to still feel its metallic taste on his tongue, teeth, gums, or its fire in his lungs, he remembers how it felt to burn. So, simmering in the heat of the rising sun and unease of a stranger, he sits, and he waits .

A beat passes.

Another.

‘What,’ Curly begins again, grip unrelenting as his voice regains its steady husk, ‘do you want with my hair?’

Louis short circuits, battles a snort, and abruptly decides he is very much over this situation and over curly boys with mile long hair and the cosmos burning behind green irises because _what the fuck._

‘Trust me, love, when I say the only thing I want with your hair,’ a disbelieving yet deliberate glare is lowered to the chocolate, curled manacles restraining Louis to the stiff, timbered chair, and paired with simpering words that roll off Louis lips as he leans forward and huffs a hot, deliberate breath onto his cheek, ‘is to _get out of it_.’

It is clearly not the answer the boy had anticipated as Louis watches dark brows furrow creating a crease so seemingly foreign on lily white skin. Still, no words fill the space between the two of them so Louis continues. ‘Not that I wouldn’t love to sit and chat but I really nee-’

‘You _don’t_ want to cut my hair?’ Curly interrupts, incredulity painted in the contours of his face, and Louis truly wants to bottle that voice and intoxicate himself on it. ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Listen, I feel for you in whatever crisis it is you’re going through right now, I really do’ Louis says. He is so done with this strange celestial creature - way out of his depth. ‘But if you could kindly,’ he pauses trying to find the right words and settles on ‘get me the fuck out of this mess so I can be on my merry way.’

Louis should not feel nauseous when Curly’s eyes light with mirth at his declaration but the fog of unease has already settled in his stomach burning an unfamiliar anxiety into his skin.

‘You mean,’ he says, finally releasing his fingers from Louis and crossing them across the lilac draped over his chest, stepping a breath back and Louis fights with everything in himself not to follow the warm air of his retreat, ‘ _without_ your satchel?’

The world tilts sideways at the realisation that his hands have been grasping at air throughout their entire exchange and suddenly Louis’ thoughts are molasses and the acid is returning to his throat and this is _not happening_. Louis hates that he weighs his life on that stupid fucking tiara but when he has the girls to think of…

He cannot fuck up this job.

He needs that goddamn satchel back.

‘You won’t find it,’ are the words oozing with casual arrogance that pull Louis from his mind and he can't push his fist into his mouth to filter the manic laugh that tumbles from his lips.

‘Love, I have lead heists in places larger that your pretty little tower, my name is Louis Tomlinson and it has a price tag larger than your body weight in gold. This is part of something much larger than your precious, pretty little curls; I'm not threatened by you.’

‘Perhaps,’ Louis is unsettled by the nonchalance with which this boy glosses over his warning, twirling a slender, practiced finger idly through said curls, lips quirked just so, as if unburdened by stifling heavy air they breathe in and out. ‘But you can tear this tower down brick by brick and you will never find your satchel without me.’

A pause.

A grin.

‘Lovely to meet you Louis Tomlinson, my name is Harry and I have a proposal for you.’


End file.
